


if you go chasing rabbits

by De_Nugis



Series: Renovation [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a mishap on a nature hike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you go chasing rabbits

**Author's Note:**

> Pairing note: this is part of a Sam/Dean 'verse, though the fic itself has no non-gen content.
> 
> Takes place in the year or so covered by [Everything changes, nothing does](http://archiveofourown.org/works/258925).
> 
> Written for galathea_snb (first half) and aerynsun5 (second half) who requested Renovation timestamps.
> 
> Title from Jefferson Airplane.

They’d had a rat in their well over the summer. A dead rat. Sam had had to climb down and haul it out with a bucket.

Dean had spent the night puking. Sam’s pretty sure it was psychological. Dean doesn’t like rats. Still, after that the artesian well was a no brainer. A very expensive no brainer. 

_Fucking rabbits_ , Sam thinks. The leaves he’s sitting on are thick and dry, the sun almost warm. He can afford to lean back against the rock for a minute or two and think bad thoughts about rabbits. The pain is trying to drill down into the echoing space and there’s something there, something mute. Something dead. But it’s Dean who doesn’t like rats. Anyway, the sun’s out, here, and it’s dry. And the worst Sam has to contend with right now is being injured by rabbits.

The ankle is probably just sprained. It’s not like there are bits of bone poking out or anything. Sam prods cautiously at the swelling above his sneaker. OK, it feels like there are bits of bone poking out, but there aren’t.

And he has options. That’s another good thing. He could walk back four miles on a broken ankle. Or sprained, it could still be sprained. That’s an option. He could lie here and die of starvation and exposure. It’s not a bad spot. It’s dry and the sun’s strong, maybe a bit past two o’clock. He’d set out after lunch. There’s a huge double beech tree right beside him. It’s mostly bare, and the leaves still hanging on are thin and brown, but the bark is nice. Smooth and grey, but it wrinkles and cracks criss-cross like an elephant’s skin where the branches stick out.

There’s moss, on the trunk, on the rocks, but it’s not too damp. It’s not dark and dripping like the well. And there’s lichen. He brushes his hand against it experimentally. It’s dry and crinkly and it leaves a few verdigris flakes on his hand. It’s not like he wouldn’t have anything to occupy his mind if he just stayed. Lichen is probably fascinating stuff, if you take the time to really think about it. He’s even getting reception on his iPhone. He could look up lichen facts.

There’s the rub, though. He’s getting reception in his iPhone. Goddamn can-you-hear-me-now Verizon. Which means he’s not allowed to hop back home, or resign himself to spending his last hours contemplating lichen. He has to call Dean. He has to call Dean and explain that he hurt himself following a rabbit. A wabbit. Sam would be willing to bet the (admittedly unimpressive) contents of his wallet that the conversation will include wabbits.

That’s assuming he can reach the words. That his heel won’t slip on the rock, on the slick damp moss.

It’s not too far down. Dean doesn’t like rats.

Maybe he’ll lie. Dean doesn’t like him lying about the big stuff, but surely he doesn’t have to be strictly truthful about rabbits. Sometimes it’s easier to reach the words when he lies.

He hits D. on his phone. Could be Dean won’t answer. If he’s running a table saw or something it’s hard for him to hear his phone.

“Sam?” There’s a clink of cutlery and a mesh of low voices in the background. He must have caught Dean taking a late lunch. 

“No yelling, no mockery,” Sam begins preemptively.

The background noise fades, like Dean’s cupped his hand around the phone.

“What did you break?” he says. Dean always seems to have a residual fear when he goes out that he’ll come back and find Sam has fucked up somehow and reduced the house to kindling.

“Nothing in the house,” says Sam. “Just me. A bit. My ankle. Think I broke my ankle. Tripped in the woods.”

“Tripped in the woods?” says Dean. “Where? Are you OK? You’re not practicing understatement from the foot of a cliff or something, are you?”

Dean also has issues about coming back to find Sam has reduced _himself_ to kindling.

“No cliff. Just the woods. Just the ankle. I’m pretty sure it’s broken, but I’m fine.”

Dean snorts with a fine blend of relief and accusation.

“I told you this getting back to nature business was a bad idea. Though I’d think that after a couple decades fighting monsters you could manage to walk along a path without hurting yourself. What happened, anyway?”

Sam sighs. The echoes of the well are gone for the moment. He’s safe in the dry warmth of Dean’s voice. Which is good. Except it means he probably doesn’t get to lie about the bunny thing. 

“There was a rabbit,” he says.

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line.

“A rabbit,” says Dean finally. “Sam, you know that Python bunny isn’t real, right? You are not going to tell me that you are the victim of a killer rabbit attack.”

“It ran across the path,” says Sam. “And I thought there might be a warren, off in the rocks by the trail. And I, well, I caught my foot in a rabbit hole.”

“And I used to let you handle deadly weapons. I put sharp, pointy things in your hands. Lucky we just ran up against the devil and the end of the world. We could have been doing the dangerous stuff. Like hunting wabbits.”

So Sam is sitting on the ground in the woods with a broken ankle, being mocked, at least he just won thirteen dollars and sixty-four cents off himself. The sun’s not too far past noon, and the leaves are dry. Dean’s making fun of him. Because he hurt himself hunting a wabbit.

“Are you actually going to help, or just make fun of the rabbit thing?” he says

“Who says I can’t do both? No, I’m on my way. Got to give Mrs. Bascom a call and tell her I’m off the job for the afternoon, then I’ll swing by the station, get a stretcher and someone to help haul your sasquatch ass out of the woods.”

The sun’s bright and it’s dry but panic claws at Sam’s throat, an echo, damp choking with moss and decay. There are too many stones down the well for the sound to bounce off and he can’t hear what Dean’s saying.

“It’s not far. I’m not far,” he says. Four miles, almost exactly. Sam has mapped every path and brook and ditch around their place, down to inches. “I’m up the old lumber road, the one that leads to the ledge. Right where there’s that big outcropping, you know, after the fork with the blackberry patch. You don’t need anyone.”

Dean isn’t that keen on hikes, he prefers to work on the house and garden, but Sam had dragged him up here during blackberry season with the promise of pie. The blackberry thickets are everywhere, stabbing tangles where the loggers came and went a few years back. After a couple of nights of pies Sam had set about canning. Jars sterilized in the pressure cooker, purple syrup staining the formica in the kitchen, cloudy wax seals. Dean had put up narrow shelves in the back wall of the dining room. Sam’s jars are arranged there now in careful rows, each one filled to exactly the same point, label centered. Preserved. Sam stands there in his mind, turns the one jar whose label faces its neighbor out to the world, so he can read it from his seat at the table. The echoes fade a bit, and Dean’s voice comes through. 

“Sam, that’s a few miles, dude. And it’s steep. I can’t get you back that far, not when you can’t fucking walk. Look, it’s just going to be Jim or Margaret or someone. I’m not calling in helicopter rescue.”

Sam imagines a helicopter hovering with an angry blades above the trees, EMTs hanging out of it, so many of them, like a clown car. And funny you should mention that, because their faces are painted, white and red. The EMTs are wearing orange lifepreservers, which doesn’t make sense, this is the woods, not the Titanic. Not the well. He’s not even by the brook, or the beaver pond with its old chewed sticks, clumsy stakes for beaver vamps. It’s not even damp here. 

He’d burned. He’d burned. He’s not supposed to be afraid of the water.

They’re lowering a rope to him, down from the copter, heavy metal hook swinging. If it catches him, he’ll talk. He’ll spill his guts.

“Sam?” says Dean’s voice, tiny and tinny, from the phone.

Sam doesn’t answer. 

“Damn it,” says Dean. “Sam, talk to me.”

Dean doesn’t like it when Sam falls silent. Sam shifts his grip and cranes his neck, trying to see Dean. The well goes straight up, of course it does, but there must be a twist somewhere because Sam is lost. If he could just see past the bend there’d be sun, there’d be words going past without effort, like clouds in the sky, light, no tearing hooks, but he’s lost round the bend. He should try to climb past it but he’s afraid if he moves then his heel will slip on the moss and he’ll fall. There’s water down there, a black mirror, and past that there’s fire.

Dean’s still speaking somewhere, though Sam can’t quite get what he’s saying. His voice has gone calm and measured, the way he squares things off when he’s building, making sure everything will stay solid, hold their weight. Maybe he’s building a ladder. 

Dean shouldn’t come down here. He doesn’t like rats. 

“I’m OK,” Sam says. “Don’t come down.”

“Down?” says Dean. He sounds relieved. Makes sense. He won’t have to climb down. He doesn’t like rats. “It’s uphill both ways there, dude. Can’t believe you’d go and break your princessy ankle just to drag me out on another nature walk. For a fucking rabbit. Listen. I gotta go, OK? I’ll be as quick as I can, but it could be a couple hours. You good to stick it out there? Sam?”

Sam looks around carefully. There’s sun on the dry leaves, lichen on the rocks. There’s a rat in the well but it’s dead, it’s just dead. Nothing is happening to it. It’s not coming back. He’d carried it up in a bucket – no hooks -- and buried it and Dean had spent the night puking and they have the artesian well now. God knows how they’re going to pay for it. 

There’s lichen on the rocks, the leaves are dry. Dean is on his way.

“Take your time,” says Sam. “I got some lichen research I can do.”

*************************************

Jim and Margaret are both at the station. It’s Margaret who offers to come along. Dean’s relieved. Margaret keeps her head and minds her own business. If Sam’s lost his shit up there in the woods, gone catatonic, Margaret won’t fuss and she won’t talk. Last thing they need is for Sam’s stuff to be the next juicy bit of gossip Jim passes on over the counter at the store. It’s going to be a bitch hauling all six foot five thousand of Sam out of the woods, whatever state he’s in, but Margaret’s strong.

The woods are bare brown and grey. Fuck if Dean gets what Sam sees in them, this time of year, but the shuffle of leaves as they walk does make for a companionable white noise. Maybe that kind of static works for Sam, helps him come and go between speech and silence. And the woods don’t ask questions. 

He catches sight of Sam from the top of the low rise before the blackberry patch. You could probably see the ridiculous neon orange hat he’s got on from the next state over. He’s propped against a tree trunk beside the path, in one piece. Dean lets go his breath. Some part of him had been expecting to find Sam smashed, the wholeness of his voice on the phone and the familiar frustration of his silence both illusions. 

“Hey,” says Dean to Margaret, “You mind waiting here a minute while I go ahead and check on him? I don’t know if you, uh. Sam. He’s got a few issues round people. He was going through some stuff when we moved here. And he’s mostly better. But I’m not sure, on the phone, when he called, I’m not sure how he’s doing just now. With this.”

Margaret looks at him shrewdly.

“I’d heard something,” she says. “But don’t worry. I’m not prying for more. You aren’t the first folks to come out here needing space to get through something. Go on. But we should get Sam and us out of the woods before dark. Walking the trails will be tricky with the stretcher as it is.”

“I won’t be long,” says Dean. He hopes it’s true.

Sam’s face is pinched with discomfort, but he’s not doing his fixed staring thing. Could be worse.

“Hey,” says Dean, crouching beside him. “I hope you’re embarrassed, Elmer. Tell me which ankle the Python bunny did in.”

Sam keeps silent. Could be better. Dean can see the off-kilter swelling around the top of Sam’s right sneaker. No blood, though. At least it’s not a compound fracture. Dean probes gently and Sam goes white, but he doesn’t make a sound. Not good.

“All right,” says Dean. “It’s definitely broken. Margaret’s right up there. She’s going to come down and help me lug you back to civilization. You OK with that, Sam?”

Sam looks at him for a few long moments. Sometimes it’s like there’s a well and Dean can see Sam climbing out. Eventually he nods slowly.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess.” But he’s gripping Dean’s wrist. 

“Dean,” he says, “Stop me if I start talking, OK?”

Well, that’s a new one.

“You worried loquacity’s getting to be a problem for you?” Dean says. “Cause it’s not your most conspicuous character flaw these days, Sammy.”

Sam closes his eyes and his throat works like it does sometimes, no speech emerging.

“I get it now, you know,” he says at last. His voice is husky, the way it is when he hasn’t spoken for days, rather than a minute or so. “A bit. When you got back. How there’s nothing you could have said. Some days it’s too far to climb back. Too far around the bend. But there’s also the other thing. The rat. The bucket might spill. I might spill it. The rat. I get that now. You were afraid you’d spill.”

It’s not often these days, since they got the house, it’s not often that Dean is thrown all the way back, but he teeters for a moment, like he’s going to fall, like they’re going to tangle each other and drown. Because he gets it. Oh, he gets it. Those first months back when rivulets of hell had run off him, oozed out everywhere, tracked into people’s houses, whatever he touched, whoever he went near. When any cut could let it all bleed out. No words, a flood of them, both, canceling out, or maybe tipping over. Spilling. 

For a moment Dean is angry, Sam dredging that up, pulling them down, then going back whenever he fucking chooses behind his stonewalling silence, shutting Dean out. He’s retreating now, Dean can see it. But he doesn’t close the door this time. He lets go of Dean’s wrist and brushes his hand over the stone beside them. 

“Look,” he says, like it’s apology and change of subject in one. “Lichens. They’re not one thing, you know. They’re symbiotic. Like, a collaborative organism or something. And they can grow anywhere. Bare rock. Antarctica.”

Dean looks. The rock is splotched with grey-green flakes and dull gold spots. It’s about as fascinating as the deckles or speckles or whatever Sam’s taken to obsessing over in books. But there’s something Sam needs there, the way Dean needs the house, his tools, the station. A way for Sam to come out into the world, to talk without letting out hell.

“Yeah, well, I bet Margaret shares your lichen fetish,” he says. “You can bond with the weirdo nature geek stuff. Makes for a less humiliating topic than wabbits. You ready for her to come down?”

Sam swallows again, nervously, pulling stupid stubborn Sam courage out of bare rock and goddamn lichen.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Dean waves Margaret down.


End file.
